For Valentine's Day this year I needed to come up with a candy-free card idea.  The preschool we attend wants to encourage healthy eating and discourage excessive sweets at the holidays, and so the quest was on for a kid-friendly, cute idea that didn't cost much.

I have seen personalized valentine's puzzles before and thought they were the perfect thing for little kids, but at $15 each I knew I needed my own DIY version.

I was able to score these bagged 24 piece puzzles at the discount store for $1.99 each. 

Next, I needed to personalize them.  So, with the help of my assistant, and using a leftover wall paint sample (which also included a primer) we first covered the old image from the puzzle:
Once the pieces were dry, I reassembled the mini-puzzles and used rubber stamps to personalize them:
and an alphabet set and block (similar to this and this) which I used to personalize the message (Although you could decorate them a multitude of ways, with more paint, with permanent marker, with stencils etc.) :

Once the ink was dry I dissembled the puzzles and put them in some translucent vellum envelopes I received from Jam Paper.
On the outside of the envelope I used a "Happy Valentine's Day" rubber stamp and added the message in black marker:

At the top of the envelope I punched two holes and added a baker's twine bow:

They turned out adorable. Especially since you can see through the envelope to the individual pieces.  The kids should have fun putting them together to decipher the message, and my total investment was only $7: $6 for the puzzles, and $1 for the twine. (If I had to purchase the envelopes it would have been about $7 more.) That is still less than the cost of a single personalized puzzle.